Tag: California community colleges

CSU Ends Remedial Courses

Last fall, more than one in three students starting as freshmen at the California State University (CSU) system had to take a remedial course in either English or math before they could take college-level courses in those subjects. These remedial courses generally cover material from high school and don’t count toward a degree—even though they cost the same amount and require as much class time as a college course. But this situation is about to change. Starting in 2018, all CSU freshmen will be placed in college-level courses. Those who are underprepared will receive some kind of extra support.

This is the most recent in a series of CSU reforms intended to place freshmen students into college-level courses. In 2004, the Early Assessment Program (EAP) began giving 11th graders an indication of their readiness for CSU and identified the courses they would need to complete their senior year to avoid remediation. More recently, incoming students who were required to take remediation were enrolled in Early Start, which used summer courses to prepare students for college coursework in the fall. The elimination of all remedial courses is a big change: while previous programs aimed to prepare students for college-level work before their freshmen year, CSU will now focus on helping students complete college-level work regardless of their preparation.

This policy change comes as CSU embarks on its new graduation initiative, whose goal is to raise graduation rates and close achievement gaps by 2025. What kind of impact might the elimination of remedial courses have on college completion? Students who require remediation in one or more subjects are about half as likely to graduate within four years as their peers who are ready for college-level work. The share of CSU students identified as needing remediation has been dropping for some time, and as remediation rates have fallen, six-year and four-year graduation rates have increased.

The general decline in remediation indicates that students have become better prepared over time, either in K–12 or through programs like Early Start. Though eliminating remediation will not affect how prepared students are when they start college, there is still reason to believe CSU could see an increase in graduation rates. As PPIC’s study of community college remediation showed, long remedial course sequences leave students many points of exit and can be barriers to success. Indeed, about 13% of CSU students who entered remediation in 2015 failed to complete remediation and were not at the university by their second year. With the end of remediation at CSU, students will have fewer potential exit points, they will be able to earn more college credits in their first year, and many may experience more success in college-level courses due to additional support. These potential benefits could help more students graduate and shorten their time to degree.

In addition to eliminating remediation, CSU is making changes to the Early Start program and course placement policies to further prepare students and help them find the right classes. These changes could help narrow the graduation gap between races. In 2016, only about 18% of white CSU students required some form of remediation, while about half of Latino and about 60% of African American students needed remediation in at least one subject. If these new policies do increase graduation rates, many traditionally underserved students may benefit.

Learn more

Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center
Read the PPIC report Preparing Students for Success in California’s Community Colleges

Regional Action to Boost College Success

California needs 1.1 million more workers with bachelor’s degrees by 2030 to keep up with economic demand, PPIC research has found. Three regions will play an especially critical role in addressing this challenge: Los Angeles County, the Inland Empire, and the San Joaquin Valley.

Improving college enrollment and graduation rates in these regions could help close more than half of this projected statewide skills gap, according to a new PPIC report, Meeting California’s Need for College Graduates: A Regional Perspective. It analyzes the challenges ahead and recommends ways to meet them. At a Sacramento event, report coauthor Kevin Cook summarized the findings and a panel of experts described promising initiatives already underway in these regions. Report coauthor Hans Johnson, director of the PPIC Higher Education Center, moderated the panel discussion.

Panelist Benjamin Duran, executive director of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, said his group has created a partnership of public and private colleges and universities, as well as community college districts, from Kern through San Joaquin Counties. One of the consortium’s projects involves improving remedial education, which has traditionally consisted of non-transferable classes that delay—and all too often end—students’ college careers. Under the newer approach championed by the consortium, students deemed underprepared for college work are able to enroll in college-level courses right away but also get supplementary support.

The Central Valley consortium is also working to encourage more students—particularly those in the community colleges—to take 15 units per semester or 30 per year so that more of them graduate on time. “When you’re able to go to school full time, the research is showing that you’re far less likely to drop out—you’re going to finish quicker,” Duran said.

Alma Salazar, senior vice president of the Center for Education Excellence and Talent Development at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said, “We do what all great organizations do—we take someone else’s idea and try to make it better.” The result, she said, is the L.A. Compact, modeled after an effort in Boston. It is a collaboration among area organizations, educational institutions, unions, and local government leaders. The focus is on three goals:

  • All students graduate from high school;
  • All students have access to and are prepared for success in college; and
  • All students have access to pathways to sustainable jobs and careers.

Ken O’Donnell, associate vice president of the Student Success Program Integration and Assessment at California State University, Dominguez Hills, talked about his campus’s success in improving its six-year graduation rate from about 30% to 42% in a few years. O’Donnell echoed the PPIC report, which finds that improving success rates for those already in college will have the greatest impact on the statewide skills gap. “You’ve already improved capacity without adding a single additional seat,” he said.


Learn more

Read the report Meeting California’s Need for College Graduates: A Regional Perspective
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Federal Data Could Help Students Choose a College

Every year, hundreds of thousands of California high school seniors make significant financial decisions about whether and where to attend college. But students and their families currently have few options when it comes to knowing the financial costs and benefits of attending certain colleges and choosing certain majors.

A new federal bill would allow for a nationwide data system that could provide earnings information by college and major, among other data. The bipartisan bill, called the College Transparency Act, would allow student records from individual colleges to be submitted to the federal government and combined with earnings and financial aid information from the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) and the US Department of Education. Currently, the Higher Education Act prohibits connecting student-level information kept by colleges, such as a student’s enrollment and major, to earnings and aid data kept by federal agencies. This leaves students and parents in the dark as they try to weigh the economic benefits of colleges and majors against the rising costs of attending college.

What could a new federal data system mean for California?

California currently lacks a longitudinal statewide data system that can track students from college to work, and the information that is available to students has limitations. For example, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office provides the Salary Surfer, a helpful tool that presents salary information on community college graduates by program of study, using a combination of student data and data from the California Employment Development Department. But the Salary Surfer only includes those students who attended a community college and subsequently work in California, there’s no indication of whether students transferred to a four-year college to obtain a bachelor’s degree (which would likely affect earnings), and there’s no campus-level information.

A new federal data system could have some advantages over a state-run system. The market for higher education has become more national, and more Californians are choosing colleges outside of the state. In addition, some graduates of colleges in California leave the state to work, and their earnings can’t be recorded by a state-based system. A comprehensive federal database could help students compare schools across state lines and give a more complete picture of graduates’ earnings, even if they work in another state. Currently, the federal College Scorecard offers a helpful but limited look at earnings. The scorecard only has earnings information for those who receive some sort of federal financial aid and does not show earnings by major.

The proposed data system could fill existing blind spots in California’s databases and the current federal scorecard, providing information across state lines and earnings estimates for both colleges and majors within those colleges. Such a system could help students and parents more accurately weigh the costs and benefits associated with the important and sometimes expensive decision of whether and where to attend college.

Learn more

Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Year-Round Pell Grant Revived

As California State University and the University of California work to increase the number of students who graduate within four years, the federal government has reinstituted the year-round Pell Grant—a financial aid program that can help accomplish this goal. Increasing on-time graduation rates has benefits for both students and the state—opening up more spots in the state’s higher education institutions, reducing the total amount of tuition and fees that students pay, and allowing students to enter the workforce sooner.

The year-round Pell Grant is designed to address a specific problem: while students need to take 15 units in the fall and in the spring semester to graduate on time, many take only 12 units, which adds an extra year to their time to degree. Acknowledging this issue, some campuses are adopting the “Finish in Four” model, which encourages students to complete 30 units per year while giving them flexibility in how they meet that goal. For example, a student could take 12 units in the fall, 12 in the spring, and 6 in the summer. The year-round grant program complements this model by allowing recipient students flexibility to use Pell funding for summer coursework.

Many California students already receive Pell Grants―around 46% of students at CSU and UC, and 29% at the community colleges. The new year-round grant allows recipients to receive one-and-a-half Pell awards in one academic year. While this may not cover the full cost—six units during the summer term costs about $120 more than six units in the fall and spring terms—it makes attending more affordable.

However, it is unclear if the program will incentivize students to enroll in the summer term to stay on track for timely graduation. The program was previously only in effect for two years (2009–2011), and the limited research studying its impact suggests mixed results. Preliminary findings from a study presented at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management conference found a small increase of 3.5 percentage points in Pell students’ summer enrollment. Initial findings from another study presented at the Association for Education Finance and Policy conference found that summer enrollment increased by 28 percentage points. Given the short lifespan of the first year-round Pell, its impact may have been limited by students’ lack of awareness of the program and campuses’ lack of infrastructure to offer the right courses.

To ensure the program’s effectiveness, colleges need to help students use the summer semester to reach a full 30 units per year. The year-round Pell is not the only effort to help students use their summers to finish on time. For example, Sacramento State University is offering $1,000 grants for students who enroll in the summer term. Given the uncertainty of long-term federal funding for a year-round Pell, campuses may need to develop other similar programs to incentivize summer enrollment and encourage on-time graduation.

Learn more

Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

UC May Struggle to Meet Transfer Requirement

Governor Brown’s May budget proposal withholds $50 million from the University of California (UC), which must undertake a series of reforms to restore the funds. One requirement—the result of a deal made during the 2015 budget process—is that UC meet its fall 2017 target of enrolling only two new in-state freshmen for every in-state transfer student, both systemwide and at each campus (except Merced). In 2016, the system enrolled 2.3 freshmen for every transfer student. The 2:1 target is intended to increase the number of transfer students served by UC. But reaching this freshmen-to-transfer ratio while responding to growing freshmen demand could prove very difficult this year and in the future.

UC has made progress in enrolling more transfer students but has not come closer to meeting its target ratio. In the last year, UC enrolled almost 2,000 more transfer students, a 13% increase and the biggest jump in more than a decade. However, UC also enrolled more than 5,000 additional freshmen compared with the previous year (a 17% increase)—leaving the freshmen-to-transfer ratio slightly higher.

In recent years, demand to attend UC has increased much faster for freshmen than for transfers. This year, there are more than 3.5 freshmen applicants for every transfer applicant. Since 2011, freshmen applications have increased by 31%, while transfer applications have declined by 1%.

Can UC attain a 2:1 ratio while responding to growing demand for freshmen slots in 2017? To do so, the system would need to draw more transfer students from a smaller applicant pool—especially if officials also plan on increasing freshmen enrollment. Compared to last year, 1,000 fewer in-state transfer students and 6,000 more in-state freshman applied. This problem is particularly acute at Santa Cruz and Riverside, which enrolled more than 3.5 freshmen for every transfer student in 2016 and may not meet the 2:1 goal this year.

UC may also have trouble meeting its target freshmen-to-transfer ratio in the future. If the number of freshmen applicants keeps increasing while the number of transfer applicants stagnates, UC may have to turn away more in-state freshmen applicants to meet its goal. To increase the quantity and quality of future transfer pools, the system is working to expand existing transfer agreements between UC campuses and nearby community colleges. In addition, UC’s new Transfer Pathways program helps prepare community college students in the most popular majors to transfer as juniors to any UC campus. The new program could start showing results in the next couple of years.

Though transfer demand at UC is sluggish, transferring is still a popular path for students elsewhere. California State University (CSU) has seen 14% growth in transfer applications since 2011 and, in 2016, received over 106,000 transfer applications (about three times as many as UC). UC could look to a recent success at CSU, which worked with the California Community Colleges to develop the Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT). Like the Transfer Pathways program, the ADT prepares community college students for junior-level entry at any CSU campus. But the ADT goes further by guaranteeing that students will only need 60 more units at CSU to graduate from their major. It also guarantees students admission to the CSU system and offers priority consideration at a local CSU campus. The ADT is quickly becoming a popular option, with 30,000 ADTs awarded in 2015–16 alone. Of course, students are considering other factors, such as cost, distance, eligibility, and availability when choosing where to apply for transfer. Guaranteed pathways to a degree and priority consideration in admission, however, are likely to entice potential transfers.

It will be difficult for UC to achieve its 2017 transfer requirement, especially at Santa Cruz and Riverside—putting into question whether the system will receive the $50 million withheld in the governor’s budget proposal. With increasing demand for freshmen slots, UC must work to increase the pool of transfer applicants to meet both the 2:1 goal and freshmen demand going forward.

Learn more

Read the report Higher Education in California: Expanding College Access
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Educational Progress Stalls in California

California is known as an engine of economic growth and innovation in the United States and across the world. A highly educated workforce has long gone hand in hand with the state’s robust economy.

California’s historically strong commitment to higher education—providing low-cost access to public colleges and universities at a time of rapid population growth—led to a large increase in college enrollment and completion. Baby boomers who were of prime college age during the 1960s and 1970s benefited from that expansion. Today, those boomers are the best-educated adults of that generation in the developed world. Older working-age adults (age 55–64) in California are more likely to have a bachelor’s degree than in any of the 32 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Is California’s younger generation keeping up with other countries?

Unfortunately, generational progress in college completion has nearly stalled in California. Although more California high schoolers are completing their diploma today than 30 years ago, the share that subsequently earns a bachelor’s degree has not changed much: 33% of those age 25–34 in California today have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to 31% of those age 55–64. Other countries have made much stronger progress. Indeed, the share of college attainment among young adults in California ranks 22nd of the 32 OECD countries, and the state’s generational progress is dead last.

The lack of generational progress in California is a cause for concern. College attainment not only benefits individuals’ earnings and employment prospects but also contributes to California’s economy by attracting businesses and keeping the state competitive in an increasingly globalized marketplace. Increasing the share of high school graduates eligible for the state’s public universities could help improve educational attainment among California’s young adults.

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Guided Pathways in Community College

In California and across the country, community colleges are working hard on reforms aimed at increasing college completion, particularly among students historically underrepresented in higher education. Yet many promising innovations have not moved the needle. One reason is that many of these reforms, while innovative, focus on only a small proportion of the student body, or improve only one part of the students’ college experience. As a result, colleges have begun to adopt a more comprehensive institutional reform known as “guided pathways.”

Guided pathways are based on a set of scalable design principles, outlined in the 2015 book Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success. These principles include

  • Helping students choose and enter a program pathway
  • Mapping pathways to students’ end goals
  • Keeping students on path
  • Ensuring that students are learning

Implementation may occur in a variety of ways, but colleges have found it essential to focus on the following areas:

  • Guided exploration for undecided students. This includes clustering hundreds of programs into a handful of broad focus areas. In addition, some colleges offer foundational courses to help students select a major. In some cases, all students enroll in a foundational course within their broad field of interest. Mentored by faculty, students may research different careers, interview or shadow individuals in a particular field, and get a taste of the different competencies within each major while honing their research skills.
  • Clearly delineated program requirements. Cross disciplinary teams of instructional and counseling faculty, staff, and administrators create “program maps” to show the path necessary for labor market success and further education. Students may take elective courses that are not on the program map, but they will also know which courses each program requires.
  • Proactive and integrated academic and non-academic support. When support services are optional, students may fail to identify the services they need or lack the confidence to ask for help. Services can take many forms, from embedding academic support in the classroom to providing specialized counselors. At Guttman Community College in New York City, an entering group of students is split into “houses,” and a team of instructional faculty, counseling faculty, and peer mentors is responsible for each house. Faculty and peer mentors meet regularly to discuss individual student progress, coordinating their actions and communications with each other and the students.
  • Developmental education transformation. Developmental education—also known as remedial education or basic skills—has traditionally focused on courses such as college algebra and English composition. Reforms would create accelerated pathways aligned with a small set of broad programs (e.g., liberal arts, STEM, business, and health). Our recent research has found that the reform efforts happening across the state—for example, as part of the California Acceleration Project—are well positioned to create developmental education pathways that are better aligned to programs of study. PPIC’s ongoing research aims to shed light on the most promising developmental education reforms.

Opportunities for California Community Colleges
The last six months have seen tremendous momentum and support for guided pathways in California. This support has emerged at all levels, including the governor, legislature, the Chancellor’s Office, national foundations, and college faculty and administrators. Last month, with the support of the College Futures Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, and the Teagle Foundation, the Chancellor’s Office awarded grants to twenty colleges as part of The California Guided Pathways Project. Last year, three community colleges in California were awarded the American Association of Community Colleges Pathways grant to assist them with planning and implementing a pathways framework. In addition, the Governor’s Budget proposal for 2017‒18 includes $150 million one-time Proposition 98 funds to support new guided pathways programs in community colleges. Finally, Senate Bill 539, introduced during the 2017 legislative cycle, proposes to use an incentive grant to help establish guided pathways that would boost completion and transfer. Given this wide-ranging support, much can be learned from the experiences in other states and systems. It will also be critical for colleges to conduct deep examinations of how existing college initiatives, such as those involved with the Basic Skills Student Outcomes and Transformation program, can be integrated into guided pathways. In an upcoming blog post, we will explore how developmental education reform intersects with the guided pathways framework..

Students Choose College with Future Jobs in Mind

Throughout California and the nation, hundreds of thousands of high school seniors are currently making decisions about where to attend college. An increasingly important part of that decision is based on career opportunities. PPIC’s statewide survey on higher education finds that the vast majority of Californians (77%) believe the state’s higher education system is very important to the economic vitality of the state.

Students’ career goals play an important role in the decision to go to college at all. According to an annual nationwide survey of freshmen conducted by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, the vast majority of students agree that a very important reason to go to college is “to be able to get a better job” (85%) and “to get training for a specific career” (76%). A record-high 60% of students say that a very important consideration in choosing a college is the ability of its graduates to obtain good jobs.

Students are right in thinking that college can give them economic advantages. Using data from the 2014 and 2015 American Community Survey, we examine some basic labor market outcomes for recent college graduates (ages 22 to 29) in California. The advantages in terms of employment and wages are clear. Young adults with a college degree are much less likely to be unemployed and, on average, earn far higher wages.

Of course, not all majors are equal when it comes to career opportunities. Among young adults with a bachelor’s degree, wages vary widely by major. Among the ten most popular majors for young adults in California, the most remunerative major is computer and information sciences; young workers with those degrees earn more than twice as much as young workers who majored in psychology. But even among those paid least, wages are still substantially higher than those of less educated workers.

Students attend college for many important reasons beyond economics. But because career opportunities are an important consideration for most, state policymakers and higher education institutions should seek ways to provide students with accurate and meaningful information about labor market outcomes by college and by major. The American Community Survey does not provide information for specific colleges nor for community college certificates, but public colleges in California can link student records with wage records from the Employment Development Department. For example, California’s community colleges have created a “Salary Surfer,” which offers useful information on wages for students contemplating different career paths and provides a good model for other colleges to follow.

Testimony: Accurately Assessing College Readiness

Olga Rodriguez, research fellow at the PPIC Higher Education Center, testified before the Senate Education Committee in Sacramento today (April 19, 2017). Here are her prepared remarks.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning. My name is Olga Rodriguez and I am a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. PPIC is a nonpartisan policy research organization and does not take positions on legislation. My comments are based on research we have conducted at PPIC on California’s community colleges.

As you heard during last month’s remediation hearing, every year, California’s community colleges identify hundreds of thousands of students as not ready for transfer-level courses in math and English. Since these courses are required to transfer to a four-year college, students deemed underprepared are placed in developmental (also known as remedial or basic-skills) courses to prepare for college work. These placement decisions have profound effects: a sizeable portion of students in remedial classes never earn a degree or certificate, or transfer to a four-year college. Our study finds that 80% of entering students take at least one developmental course in math, English, or both, and most of those students never complete a college-level math or English course.

Despite the critical role of assessment and placement, there is little clarity about how colleges across the state assess and place students into math, English, and English as a Second Language (ESL) sequences. Prior studies conducted in California relied on a small sample of community colleges and examined policies in place before 2010. To help fill this information gap, in spring 2016 we surveyed all 113 community colleges in the state; 82 of the colleges participated in the survey. They reported on the assessment and placement policies used to place students into transfer-level math and English as well as the highest level of ESL during the 2014–15 academic year. The broad goal of the survey is to provide policymakers and practitioners with a descriptive landscape that will improve understanding of the policies used across the state to assess and place students into math, English, and ESL courses, prior to the implementation of reforms associated with the Common Assessment Initiative. I describe our findings below.

  • First, colleges vary in how they identify college-ready students. We find that the use of assessment tests is widespread; 100% of colleges reported using assessment tests for math, English, and ESL placement. However, there is variation in the types of tests used and how they are used. Over half of colleges used the Accuplacer for placement into math and English courses; the Compass, which was taken off of the market last November due to poor predictive validity, was the most commonly used assessment test for ESL (33%), and was used by over 20% of colleges for math and English. It is very important to note that even when colleges use the same test, they apply different rules for the minimum scores that qualify as college ready. For example, while more than half of colleges reported using the Accuplacer test to assess college readiness in math, cut scores ranged from 25 to 96 out of 120. A student with a score of 58 (the median score used by colleges) would be deemed college ready at half of these colleges, but not at the other half. The lack of consistency means that access to college courses—credit-bearing courses that students need in order to transfer to four-year colleges—is determined not only by students’ performance on the test, but also by the policies at the college where they enroll. This wide variation may be especially challenging for the 40% of students who eventually enroll in more than one community college campus, as they could be deemed college ready at one college but referred to remediation in another. These policies end up undermining opportunities to transfer between campuses and provide mixed signals about what it means to be ready for college-level courses. Furthermore, assessment and placement practices have implications for equity. Students of color are more likely to attend colleges that set higher math cutoff scores, which means these students have less access to the math classes they need to advance.
  • Second, the use of multiple measures continues to be sparse and unsystematic. In California, the use of other measures in addition to placement exams (known as multiple measures) is mandated by law—in fact, research shows that measures such as high school achievement data do a comparable or better job at predicting college success. But while assessment tests were standard practice, there was substantial variation in the types of other measures used across colleges and across subjects. We find that the majority of colleges used additional criteria to determine placement into math (94%) and English (90%), but just over half did so for ESL (52%). Colleges used, on average, three measures to assess and place students in English and math courses, and two measures to assess and place students into ESL courses. Additional measures included high school GPA, grades in prior English and math coursework, results from the Early Assessment Program (EAP), and counselor or instructor recommendations, among others. Overall, the use of high school records was more common for math and English, but much less so for ESL. In addition, while some colleges used multiple measures in a systematic way for all students, up to 30% of colleges only used multiple measures if students requested it or challenged their placement. Uneven implementation of multiple measures may aggravate inequities if students with cultural and social capital are more likely to take advantage of these policies.
  • Third, assessment and placement in ESL needs more attention. Each year, about 30,000 students (6% of incoming community college students) enroll in ESL, and these students may be especially disadvantaged by current policies. Compared to English and math, in ESL, fewer colleges offered exemption opportunities (28% offered none at all in ESL vs. 4–5% in English and math) and test preparation activities (40% offered practice tests in ESL vs. 70–74% for English and math). Additionally, our findings suggest that a lower proportion of colleges used high school achievement data for ESL placement, indicating that English Learners may not be benefitting from one of the most promising methods of improving placement accuracy.
  • Finally, ongoing reforms aim to promote more consistent and accurate placement policies. With the support of the governor, the legislature, and the system office, a significant amount of resources have been devoted to improving assessment and placement at community colleges. The Common Assessment Initiative, for example, will establish a shared assessment system. Our survey finds that over 80% of colleges reported having discussions about the Common Assessment Initiative for English and math; just under 80% of colleges did so for ESL. Still, colleges will have the autonomy to set their own rules for placement, and that’s a cause for concern if the inconsistencies described above continue. The Multiple Measures Assessment Project (MMAP) is a collaborative effort led by Cal-PASS Plus and the RP Group to support colleges in implementing multiple measures in a more consistent and effective way. About half of colleges reported having discussions about multiple measures, and those that did frequently did so as part of their participation in the MMAP. Collaborative efforts such as this one can help ensure consistent placement policies across the state’s community colleges.

In sum, assessment and placement policies should help students reach their academic goals—not stand in the way of those goals. As colleges work to enhance the efficacy of developmental education, implementing evidence-based practices that accurately assess students’ college readiness will be critical. A more equitable and efficient system for assessment and placement is a vital step in helping all students achieve their academic goals.

The Growth of College Promise Programs

A majority of Californians believe that college affordability is a big problem for the state, according to the PPIC Statewide Survey. Low family incomes and the high cost of living have made it difficult for many students to pay the full price of college. This is true even though California’s public colleges and universities have some of the lowest tuition levels in the country and the majority of community college, UC, and CSU students receive grants to cover the cost of tuition. Policymakers have taken notice of the public’s concerns.

Many local governments, school districts, colleges, and business communities have been addressing the issue of access and affordability through “promise programs.” The “promise” label has been adopted to represent a wide range of programs that share at least two specific characteristics: they are limited to individuals in a particular geographic area, such as a city or school district, and they provide some level of financial support for postsecondary education. Nearly 80 promise programs have been launched nationwide since 2001. In California, according to WestEd, 23 of these programs have been created since 2008—13 of them in the past two years.

The most well-known California-based promise program is the Long Beach Promise, which offers all public school students in the district a tuition-free first semester at Long Beach Community College. It also guarantees admission to Long Beach State University for students who complete required college preparatory courses with the necessary grades.

College promise programs often couple financial incentives with extensive outreach to middle-school students and improved student services like tutoring and counseling. In California, the vast majority of these programs are focused on getting students to enroll in community colleges—most offer one semester of free community college tuition and do not provide enrollment guarantees to a four-year college.

While it’s important to ensure that students who might not otherwise consider college be given incentives to attend, the state’s biggest challenge is ensuring that college students stay in school and earn a degree or certificate. Only about half of California community college students receive an associate degree or certificate, transfer to four-year schools, or complete 60 transferable units within six years of enrolling. There is some anecdotal evidence that promise programs improve college-going rates, but they do not seem to boost college completion. In order to improve completion rates, programs may need to provide support services for participants who have entered college.

More generally, the wide range of program designs makes it difficult to assess their effectiveness—even within California, promise programs have different residency requirements, eligibility criteria, grades of entry (middle school vs. freshman year of high school), financial awards, support services, and levels of financial sustainability. Defining the basic elements of promise programs and developing effective standards for program design and implementation will help ensure their future success.

Learn more

Read the PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Higher Education
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center